


Virtues Come in Sevens

by angstytimelord



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, Seven Heavenly Virtues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-09 01:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1963809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angstytimelord/pseuds/angstytimelord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will reflects on all that Hannibal has taken away from him -- and refuses to relinquish his faith in the intrinsic good of the human race.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Faith

**Author's Note:**

> This short series was inspired by a challenge in the landcomm I participate in on Livejournal. The challenge was to write a series of seven stories for one character, each focusing on a different virtue that the character possesses (or wishes to have). Will seemed a pretty obvious choice for that, as he DOES possess a great many virtues -- though he may struggle with them at times!
> 
> And yes, there will more than likely be a follow-up series of seven deadly sins, also focusing on Will. After all, as wonderful as he is, Will isn't perfect by a long shot!

He wanted to believe in the goodness of people. He really did.

Will sighed softly, closing his eyes and passing a hand across his forehead .After dealing with Hannibal, it was almost impossible to embrace such a belief.

Could anyone manage to hold on to their faith when they were confronted with that kind of evil? Will asked himself. He didn't think so. But he was trying his best, even though seeing the horrific acts that Hannibal had committed was enough to shake his own faith to the core.

How could it not? Seeing all of those bodies, the horrible mutilations, and then coming to realize just what it was that Hannibal had done with the missing parts ....

Will shuddered, pushing that thought away from his mind. At the moment, it was hard enough to think of the fact that Hannibal was the Chesapeake Ripper, the killer he'd spent so much time searching for, and that he had taken so long to discover that fact.

It wasn't until he'd had all of that time in jail, all of those hours to think about the events that had occurred, that he'd realized what he should have seen all along.

Hannibal was evil. A monster. He was barely human.

Will didn't think he _was_ human. Hannibal merely wore a human mask, one that he could take off at any time. His humanity was only a thin surface veneer.

Humanity? Will couldn't hold back a snort at that thought. There was no one he'd ever met who was _less_ human. Knowing someone like Hannibal, realizing what he was capable of, was enough to make anyone lose their faith in humanity.

But he wasn't going to let that happen, he told himself firmly. He was going to hold on to his faith, no matter how hard it might be to do so.

Hannibal wouldn't take that away from him.

He'd taken so much else of what Will had treasured. Hannibal had taken his friends, people he'd been close to, people he'd cared for. He'd even taken Will's freedom, for a short while.

And in the end, in their last confrontation, Hannibal had tried to take his life. Will could still feel the pain of that curved blade sinking into his stomach; he wondered if he would always feel it, every time he thought of Hannibal and those last few desperate moments between them.

It had been so hard to believe what he'd seen -- that Abigail was still alive, and that Hannibal had so cruelly and callously taken her life.

Seeing that would have been enough to destroy anyone's faith in humanity. But he had to keep reminding himself that Hannibal couldn't be seen as human.

That mask of humanity had been ripped away during those last few seconds, when he had stared into Will's eyes and accused _him_ of being the evil one, the person who had betrayed them both. Will knew that wasn't true, but those words still haunted him.

Why had he called Hannibal and let him know that the authorities were on their way? Had some part of him actually _wanted_ that monster to escape?

He didn't want to believe that. He couldn't let himself believe it.

That, more than anything else, shook his faith in himself. The fact that somehow, deep inside him, he might have given Hannibal enough time to find a way out.

He should never have made that call, but it was too late now to look back and analyze what he had done wrong. It all seemed blurred together now; it was an amalgam of sights and sounds and sensations that he had a hard time separating from each other.

Somehow, he had managed to hold on to his faith in humanity through all of that, and through the weeks of convalescence that had followed.

He'd keep holding on, for as long as he had to. Hannibal wouldn't destroy that faith.

He wouldn't let that monster win this battle, Will vowed. Hannibal might think that he'd made inroads into Will's psyche, but he hadn't taken it over.

He _would_ shake off that dark influence, and he'd find Hannibal, wherever he was, and make sure that monster spent the rest of his life behind bars. Death was too good for him. He deserved to suffer, as he had made Will suffer through an incarceration.

The human race _was_ made up of good people, Will told himself. It was just that everyone had a dark side -- and that darkness was easy to succumb to.

He hadn't let himself do it, even though Hannibal had encouraged him as much as possible -- and he'd been afraid that there were times when he was nearing the breaking point. But he had kept thinking of all the good things in his life, the good people he had known.

That faith was what had saved him from giving in to the darkness that had beckoned so seductively. And it was what would sustain him in the hunt to come.

In the end, his faith would triumph by pushing the darkness away.


	2. Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will is determined to hold on to the hope that he _will_ catch Hannibal and put him behind bars.

He had to believe that he would find Hannibal.

Will sighed, leaning back in his chair, wincing at the twinge of pain in his stomach. He wondered if that pain would always be with him, if it would ever go away.

He doubted that it would leave him in peace. It would always be a reminder of those last few moments with Hannibal, that dangerous embrace that he'd been all too willing to go into, thinking that it was somehow benign. He should have known better.

He'd known how wily Hannibal was; he had known that the man was a monster, that he couldn't be trusted. Yet he had walked into that embrace willingly.

And he'd been stabbed in the gut for his trouble and his trust. He should have expected that; he had already seen what Hannibal had done to Abigail, so why should he have believed that such an evil monster would be any more compassionate with him?

Yet something in him _had_ thought that Hannibal had some feelings for him. He'd been stupid and careless, and it had nearly cost him his life.

But he had survived that attack, and lived to fight another day.

He would keep on surviving, Will told himself, his mouth an unsmiling, firm line. He wouldn't give up or give in until he had caught Hannibal and put him behind bars.

That monster had hurt too many people, destroyed too many lives. He had left too many families bereft; his evil had stretched too far to let it go. He was honor-bound to catch Hannibal and bring him to justice, not just for himself, but for all of the other victims.

He had failed once. He didn't plan to fail again. The next time, he would be prepared for anything, any kind of trickery that Hannibal might engage in.

He had to hold on to the hope that he would be able to track Hannibal down.

The good guys had lost the last round, but at least he and Jack had survived. Hannibal hadn't counted on that; he'd thought that he had gotten rid of both of them.

They would track him down, no matter how long it took. They would bring that monster to justice, make him pay for his crimes. He would spend the rest of his life in a small cell, the same fate that, at one point, he had intended for Will to suffer.

That would be poetic justice, of a sort, Will thought, his lips twisting in a wry smile. Make Hannibal find out just what it was like to be a prisoner.

He wanted to take Hannibal's freedom away; Will knew that for him, it would be a fate worse than death to lose that freedom, to not have the autonomy to do as he pleased.

Will wanted Hannibal to know every day of his life that he was a prisoner, that he would never be able to harm or manipulate people again. He wanted to be sure that horrible monster thought about the loss of his freedom for every moment that he was behind bars.

Of course, those thoughts would mean that Hannibal zeroed in on _him_ , blaming Will for his loss of freedom, and more than likely plotting revenge.

Well, let him, Will told himself. Once incarcerated, Hannibal couldn't hurt him again.

He'd make sure of that. He wouldn't leave an opening for that monster to sneak through. There would never again be vulnerable chinks in his armor.

He had been careful to shore up those vulnerabilities in the time that had passed since those last fateful moments with his nemesis. The next time they met, he would be the one to have the upper hand. He would make sure that good prevailed over evil.

Hannibal's run of good luck, his reign of terror, was going to end. He was going to be brought down like the dog he was, and punished for his wrongdoing.

The fangs of that viper would be wrenched out, and it would be rendered powerless.

It wouldn't be easy to find Hannibal; now that the monster behind the mask had been discovered, he would be even more careful and cunning at hiding himself.

But eventually, Hannibal would have to come out of hiding. He would begin committing more murders, and he would grow careless. His hubris wouldn't allow him to keep himself hidden forever; he was too cocky, too proud of himself, too puffed up with conceit.

Will had to hold on to the hope that they would be able to catch him sooner rather than later; he didn't want more people to become victims.

He knew all too well what it was like to fall victim to that monster. It had almost happened to him, and the last thing he wanted was for more people to turn into statistics on a page. He would keep searching for his nemesis, and keep hoping that they would catch him soon.

Good _would_ prevail over evil, he told himself. The light would overcome the darkness, just as day always succeeded night. It was inevitable.

If he kept that hope in his heart, then it _would_ be fulfilled.


	3. Charity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His horrific last confrontation with Hannibal has only heightened Will's need to help others, rather than taking away from it.

Will placed his hand on the young man's back, speaking soothing words.

He wasn't really aware of what he was saying. He was just trying to soothe the victim of a violent crime -- the _survivor_ of a crime, he corrected himself.

Within moments, the police had arrived to take over; Will let out a breath, closing his eyes as the young man was wheeled away on a gurney. He had been too shaken up to thank Will, but that didn't matter. He knew that what he had done was appreciated.

The other victim hadn't been so lucky; he thought as he glanced back into the hotel room, catching a brief glimpse of blood-soaked sheets and a blood-spattered wall.

If that young man hadn't managed to crawl to his dropped cell phone and press 911, then they wouldn't have made it here in time to save him. It had been touch and go as it was, but they'd managed to stanch the flow of blood; the medics had taken over when they'd arrived.

He hadn't seen the killer. The man had worn a mask; he'd been waiting in their hotel room, and had jumped out of nowhere and surprised them.

He'd survived. His friend hadn't. That was the way of the world sometimes.

Will knew that this hadn't been Hannibal's work, but still, the excess of blood, the rage that those wounds indicated, bothered him. It _felt_ like Hannibal, in a way.

Well, no, the rage didn't fit. Hannibal never let his killings boil over with rage. He kept that tightly contained, if it was even there. Hannibal didn't look at his murders as the product of anger; they were simply, to him, work that he needed to do.

His approach was cool and calculated. It didn't explode in anger; it was just _there_ , a business to take care of. That attitude was chilling in itself.

Hannibal cared nothing about his victims, or anyone but himself.

The only thing Hannibal cared about was satisfying the need within himself to kill, a need that Will found completely inexplicable, as he'd never felt it.

Well, maybe he had, he reflected. He had _needed_ to kill Hannibal when he had been stuck in jail, when the rage within him had threatened to overflow and spill over. He had looked into that yawning abyss of blackness that wanted to swallow his soul, and almost jumped in.

But he hadn't let himself do that. He had held himself back from that abyss, and he had turned away from the darkness that had beckoned to him.

Later, he had pretended to embrace that darkness in his failed attempt to catch Hannibal. But again, he hadn't given in to it. He'd held himself back, stayed within the light.

He wasn't like Hannibal. He should have known that his act wouldn't fool such a monster; maybe Hannibal _had_ been deceived for a while, but he had to know that Will could never be like him. He had to know that Will would never surrender to his dark side.

He cared too much about people, wanted to help them and protect them. He was the complete opposite of Hannibal in that regard.

Hannibal only _pretended_ to offer help. He offered a false charity.

All Hannibal was really interested in was satisfying his primal urge, his main directive. And that was to kill, to destroy, to take away human life.

Will knew that he himself could never be that callous. Maybe he cared about people _too_ much at times, but he could never turn his back on anyone who needed help. He could never simply walk away, not if there was anything he could do to help.

That was why he had to keep searching for Hannibal, why he had to make sure that the monster was safely locked away from the rest of the human race.

Hannibal was too dangerous to be allowed to roam free in the world.

The only way that he could protect the world and the people in it was to put Hannibal Lecter in prison. And he was determined to achieve that goal, no matter what it took.

Hannibal had nearly killed him once. He had thought that he was going to die, lying there on the floor and bleeding out, with Abigail's body so close to his own. He had thought that he would join her in death, that the bloodbath Hannibal had created would swallow them both.

But it hadn't. He had lived, and the horror of that night had only solidified his need to help others, to bestow upon them the same second chance he'd been given.

Helping others, being concerned for their welfare, was the reason he'd become a cop, and then a detective. It was the reason that he was a profiler, the reason that he taught classes about serial killers. It was why he did what he did when he went to crime scenes.

Hannibal had only heightened that charity, rather than taken away from it. And Will was sure that his need to serve and protect was only going to keep growing stronger.

It was one of the few things that Hannibal hadn't managed to take away from him, and never would.


	4. Fortitude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No matter how bleak things may look, Will is never going to give up on catching Hannibal.

No matter how bad things seemed, he couldn't give up.

Giving up would be surrendering, letting Hannibal win in the end. And he couldn't do that. Not after all that he had been through, all that he'd suffered at Hannibal's hands.

If he gave up now, then Hannibal would have the satisfaction of knowing that he'd been the ultimate winner. Will didn't want that; he wanted Hannibal to be defeated, to know that he had lost, to know that justice had finally triumphed over his evil.

The entire time he'd been behind bars in the Baltimore State Hospital For the Criminally Insane, he hadn't let himself give up. He wasn't going to do it now.

He wasn't going to sink into depression just because Hannibal had disappeared -- and because someone who he'd thought might be one of his allies had gone with him. He should have known better than to trust du Maurier -- she had never seemed quite _right_ to him.

She might have believed him when he'd said that Hannibal was the Chesapeake Ripper -- but that was only because she had known that it was the truth.

She had apparently been working with Hannibal all along.

Treacherous bitch, he thought, his lip curling in disdain. He should have known that anyone who had been close to Hannibal at one time would stay an ally of his.

And also that anyone who defected to Hannibal's side did so because they were, at heart, just as evil and monstrous as he was. They hadn't been seduced by his darkness; they had answered the call of darkness within themselves, without a backward glance.

Anyone who allied themselves with Hannibal was dead to him, and just as guilty as that monster was. That was a decision he wouldn't budge from.

When he made up his mind, he stuck with his decisions.

Well, not always, Will thought with a sigh. He had made up his mind when he had first started those long-ago sessions with Hannibal to try to trust him, to open up.

He'd done so at first, and look where that had gotten him. Hannibal had been able to get inside his mind, to screw him up to the point where there hadn't been times when he knew if he was coming or going. He had been rewired, conditioned, and under Hannibal's influence.

Not only that, but Hannibal had nearly _killed_ him with that encephalitis. He had actually _induced_ those terrifying seizures.

And he'd done it all as some kind of experiment, nothing more. He had wanted to see how far he could push Will before he'd go over the edge of a proverbial cliff.

Luckily, he'd managed to hang on by the skin of his teeth and _not_ go tumbling over that edge into a dark abyss of Hannibal's making. He hadn't let himself be destroyed; he hadn't given up then, either. He'd hung on, determined to keep himself sane.

In the end, he had managed to save himself -- even though Hannibal had made a masterful effort to destroy him, and had almost succeeded.

But he knew Hannibal's trickery now. He would be ready for it when they met again.

Will didn't doubt that they would. Hannibal was still obsessed with him; he would contrive a meeting at some point, and Will would catch him.

Maybe he himself was more than a little obsessed with capturing Hannibal now that he knew the full extent of that monster's evil. Hannibal was so much worse than Will had thought he was, and what he'd thought was pretty damn bad indeed.

Hannibal was capable of anything. There was no crime that he wouldn't commit, no evil that he wouldn't embrace. He wasn't human. He didn't even approximate human.

He could wear a human mask, but it was nothing more than a veneer.

That mask had been ripped off before, and it would be again. Only this time, Will intended to show the world just what sort of evil that mask kept hidden.

He hadn't lost his fortitude when he was in jail; he hadn't given up then, and he wouldn't give up now. Even if the situation looked hopeless, even if he sometimes felt that Hannibal was hidden away too well and would never be caught, he wouldn't let go of that hope.

Sooner or later, Hannibal would slip up and make a fatal error, and then they'd have him. It would only be a matter of time before his pride would bring him out into the open.

Once that happened -- and Will was sure that it would -- he and Jack would be able to capture Hannibal, to lock him up safely away from the rest of the world, where he couldn't do any more harm to anyone. That would be the best day of his life.

He wasn't going to give up. Things might look bad right now, with Hannibal in the wind -- but they _would_ turn around. He _would_ be caught, and imprisoned.

Only then would Will be able to relax and rest easily again.


	5. Justice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will can't help wondering if he could have done things differently during that last fateful encounter with Hannibal.

He should have known that he wouldn't be able to fool Hannibal.

Will sighed softly as he walked slowly up onto the front porch of his house, sitting down in the rocking chair there and trying to make himself relax.

He had been thinking about Hannibal and that last fateful meeting of theirs all morning, wondering if there was anything he could have done differently. If he hadn't been stupid enough to let Hannibal embrace him, if he hadn't been so shocked by Abigail's sudden appearance ....

No, that was all water under the bridge now. There was nothing he could have done to change things, and deep down inside, he knew that.

What could he have done? Even if he had made different movements, not gone into that near-fatal embrace, Hannibal would still have tried to kill him. Will didn't doubt that he'd planned it out; it was no accident of fate that he'd happened to have a knife in his grasp.

He had intended for that night to be Will's last all along. He'd intended to murder Abigail in front of Will, to make him die with that guilt on his conscience.

Only he wasn't going to feel guilty about it. Her death wasn't his fault.

Abigail's death could be laid solely at Hannibal's door. His, and only his. _He_ had murdered her, and no matter what he said, Will wasn't going to take responsibility.

In Hannibal's sick, perverted, twisted, pathetic excuse for a brain, Abigail had died because or what Will had done, betraying Hannibal to the authorities. But Will knew that she had died to feed Hannibal's rage against him, to lash out at him where it would hurt the most.

Still, he had wanted justice for Abigail, and all that he had managed to do was to get her killed. Of course, he hadn't known that she was still alive ....

If he had known, would he have done anything differently?

Will didn't think so. There was nothing else he _could_ have done, not really; his plan had gone well, up until those last few moments.

He had lost it when he'd found out that Abigail was still alive. He had been so shocked, so amazed, that he had been frozen in place for several long seconds, unable to move. Hannibal had taken advantage of that immobility, and done the cruelest thing imaginable.

There had been no need for him to kill Abigail; he had done it to punish Will, to engender guilt in him. He'd done it just to be cruel. Because he was a monster.

There wasn't one single redeemable human quality within Hannibal Lecter. That single act of cruelty had proven it; there was nothing about him that was good or decent.

Will was determined to find justice for Abigail, even more so than he had been the first time he'd thought she was dead. Not only justice for her, but for himself as well, for all that he had suffered at Hannibal's hands. And for all of Hannibal's many other victims.

They all deserved justice. They all deserved to know that Hannibal was locked up, behind bars, jailed where he could no longer cause harm and pain to anyone.

He belonged dead. But Will would settle for life imprisonment.

As long as Hannibal was behind bars, paying for the crimes he'd committed against humanity, then Will would be satisfied with that. Justice would have been served.

No, not really, he thought with a soft sigh. Justice wouldn't be served until Hannibal was judged by a higher court than the ones here on earth. He had never been religious, had never believed in a higher power, but he was sure that somewhere, someone would pass that judgment.

Hannibal was guilty of heinous crimes against so many people, some who Will had known and loved. And he wanted to see the monster punished for those crimes.

He wanted justice for all of those victims. Every single one of them.

It wasn't fair that so many people had been harmed by Hannibal's evil. Not only the victims, but the loved ones they had left behind, the people who had lost them.

They were all victims, just as much as the people who Hannibal had murdered. So in that sense, there were many, many more people to get justice for than the ones who Hannibal had dispatched from this world. So many people, so much suffering and sadness.

Will wanted to bring that all to an end, to give people closure. He wanted everyone who had suffered from Hannibal's machinations to know that he was paying for what he had done.

it wouldn't be easy to obtain that justice, to capture Hannibal once and for all. He and Jack been close -- so damn close -- but the wily snake had slipped through their fingers in the end. Will's lips firmed into a thin line, a scowl settling onto his handsome features.

He would never give up searching for that justice. He would find Hannibal, and he would make sure that the bastard was jailed for the rest of his life.

He would see justice served. And he would close the book on Hannibal, once and for all.


	6. Prudence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will can't believe that the FBI is trying to tell him they can't afford to keep up the search for Hannibal.

"What do you mean, they're saying it's too much of an expense?"

Will couldn't believe his ears. He didn't want to hear what Jack was telling him; it sounded ridiculous to him, like the lamest excuse in the book.

He was being told that it was too expensive to mount a search for Hannibal, that prudence was the byword with the FBI these days, and that they couldn't spare the expense to chase down a killer who had obviously fled the country and wouldn't be easy to find.

"The truth is, the higher-ups in the FBI just don't give a shit," he told Jack, his tone bitter. "They wish he had done away with me and they could forget the whole thing."

That wasn't entirely true, and he knew it. The FBI _wanted_ to catch the Chesapeake Ripper, but there were people who still didn't believe that it was Hannibal, even with all of the damning evidence against him. Too many people who were still enthralled by him.

His charm and charisma had fooled some people so completely that they wouldn't believe he was a killer -- even while he was slitting their own throats.

And now they were using this lame excuse to stop the search.

Well, he wasn't going to let it happen, Will thought angrily. Even if he had to fund the search for Hannibal himself, out of his own money, he would do it.

Of course, he knew as soon as the thought crossed his mind that it was impossible. He didn't have nearly enough money to finance the kind of exhaustive tracking it would take to find Hannibal. Even he and Jack together wouldn't have that kind of money.

The truth was, if the FBI didn't want to continue the search for Hannibal, then he would be forced to give up. He could look for Hannibal on his own time, but that was it.

He couldn't believe that they were letting money hold them back.

No, it wasn't money, Will thought with a sigh. It was their own short-sightedness. And besides that, it was the fact that they were embarrassed by their own failures.

If they didn't continue the search for Hannibal, if they claimed that he was now out of their jurisdiction and they no longer had any responsibility for him, then they didn't have to admit that they'd had him, had nearly caught him, and yet he had eluded them once again.

He had slipped through their fingers so many times already; the Chesapeake Ripper had been too clever even for the infamous Will Graham to catch.

By the time Will had figured out that Hannibal was the Ripper, his reputation had been in tatters. He'd been a disgraced former FBI agent, one who nobody would listen to.

Most people had thought that _he_ was the guilty party, that _he_ was the murderous monster. So many people who he had considered friends had even thought that he was insane. All of this had taught him a lesson, a very bitter one.

Never trust anyone. Even now, when he knew that Jack was the only person he could depend on, Will didn't fully trust the other man. He never had, not really.

He couldn't trust the FBI, or anyone else. He was on his own.

If the FBI wanted to be prudent with money, then he could do that. But he could still mount a search for the killer he needed to catch; it _could_ be done.

He would beg and plead if he had to, but he wouldn't simply give up on the chase. He wasn't going to let Hannibal get away with all that he had done, and he wasn't going to depend on anyone else to catch him. He was still in the middle of this situation.

His own prudence wasn't something that could be trusted; Will knew that he would move heaven and earth to catch the fiend who had nearly killed him.

This temporary setback wasn't going to stop him from achieving his goal.

"Will, there are ways around this. We'll find a way to keep looking for him," Jack said, his tone conciliatory. "I'm not going to give up, either. We've both lost too much."

Will nodded grimly in acknowledgement of Jack's words. They _had_ lost too much, both of them; they had lost friends, people they cared for -- and they'd almost lost their lives. This wasn't something that they could simply let go and turn their backs on.

If prudence was the byword for the FBI now, then they would prove that they could be prudent, and still look for the killer who had turned their lives upside down.

He would learn to be prudent, with money as well as with time. But he wouldn't cut corners in the search for Hannibal if he didn't have to. He wasn't going to say that they couldn't _afford_ to catch a dangerous killer, someone who could wreak so much havoc in the world.

Somehow, he and Jack had to convince the FBI to see things their way, to keep going after Hannibal until he was caught and safely behind bars.

Once that was done, _then_ they could think about being prudent.


	7. Temperance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will wishes that he'd been more cautious in his friendship with Hannibal.

He'd always been good at staying away from things he didn't need in his life.

That is, until he'd met Hannibal.

Will sighed softly, shaking his head in resignation. Hannibal had really thrown a monkey wrench into his life; his rhythm his patterns had been completely destroyed.

Before he'd met Hannibal, there had been a comfortable rhythm to his life, and he'd been content, if not happy. But the advent of someone who he had tried to reach out to, who he had, initially, wanted to be friends with, had thrown that rhythm completely off track.

Hannibal had twisted him this way and that, played with his mind, turned some priorities around. It had taken that last fateful meeting for him to realize that it would never stop.

As long as Hannibal was out there somewhere, then Will's priorities would never fall back into place. His first priority, the one thing uppermost in his mind at all times, would be to catch Hannibal and put him in jail, behind bars where the bastard belonged.

Getting justice, not only for himself, but for all of those other victims as well, would be a craving he couldn't assuage until it was over and done.

But catching Hannibal wasn't going to be easy. He knew that now.

He had thought that he'd be able to capture the monster by simply getting him to incriminate himself, but that hadn't worked in the way he'd believed it would.

All that had ended up doing was causing two unnecessary deaths, and putting himself and Jack into the hospital with serious wounds. The scars from those wounds would attend them both for the rest of their lives. Neither of them would ever be able to forget.

In that sense, Hannibal would be with them both for all of their days, whether he was free to wreak more havoc in the world, or looking out from a prison cell.

He should have known better than to believe that Hannibal was a friend.

Why had he ever thought that? Will asked himself. Why hadn't he, with his empathy, been able to see the monster that lurked behind the human mask?

He should have been able to discern that monster, to push it away, to warn himself that becoming involved in any way with someone who was so secretive wasn't a good idea. But he had let himself be drawn into Hannibal's world, and he had paid for that folly.

For once, his empathy had let him down. It hadn't warned him away from Hannibal; it hadn't shown him the darkness that filled that black and empty soul.

Or maybe it had tried, and he simply hadn't listened, Will thought with another sigh. He had wanted a friend, someone to talk to, and he'd thought that he had found one at long last.

That had been his downfall, trying to reach out to someone who his gut instinct had told him could very well be a dangerous person to know. If he'd known just _how_ dangerous from the start, he would have run as far away from Hannibal as he could get.

But he would have been drawn back, he told himself. He'd have had to be, since Hannibal was the criminal he had spent so much time searching for.

He would have eventually been led to Hannibal, one way or another.

He'd just happened to come under Hannibal's sphere of influence sooner rather than later, and in a much more personal way than he would have thought.

He should have been more moderate about that so-called "friendship," Will told himself. If he had, then he'd have been able to pull back when he needed to, and he would have seen Hannibal's machinations more clearly. But that was all water under the bridge now.

It didn't really matter any more. There had never been a real friendship there; he had just been someone for Hannibal to use, and then discard when the experiment was over.

In some ways, the knowledge of that still hurt.

In spite of his evil, in spite of the fact that Will knew he should have been more careful, Hannibal had been his friend for a while. The one person who seemed to understand him.

That was the last time he'd look for that kind of understanding, or for a friendship. It was the last time he'd reach out to anyone; he didn't think he could trust himself to know who was a real friend, and who was like Hannibal, a monster in disguise looking to use him.

He shouldn't let this color the rest of his life, but that would be impossible. The time that he'd spent with Hannibal Lecter would always shape his future.

He would never be able to shake it off, and he'd never be able to forgive himself. He couldn't help feeling that if he'd exercised more temperance, if he had pulled back and been more careful about developing that false friendship, then people he'd cared for would still be alive.

Will knew that in his mind and heart, he would always carry part of that blame. He would never be able to absolve himself of the guilt he felt.

He was paying the price for indulging in that fake friendship.

And he would probably go on paying that price for the rest of his life.


End file.
